Chetniks

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The Chetniks (Serbian: Четници, Četnici), officially Yugoslav Army in the Fatherland (JVUO), was a resistance movement loyal to the Kingdom of Yugoslavia's government in exile during the Second World War. The name chetnik is derived from the Serbian word četa which means "military company", and was also used for guerilla squads in wars on Balkans prior to World War II. The Yugoslav Army in the Fatherland was founded in Ravna Gora, Serbia, by Colonel Dragoljub Mihailović on 13 May 1941 following Nazi Germany's invasion of Yugoslavia. Although most of its members were Serbs and Montenegrins, the army also included some Slovenes, Croats, and Muslims by nationality. It originated as a Serbian nationalist and royalist organization opposing Ottoman rule in the 19th century.

Mihailović never officialy approved of the term Cetnik for his forces and in 1944, when reorganising the JVUO, announced: "The Yugoslav Army in the Fatherland has done its work under that title. It has never had, nor does it have, the title cetnik, or militia commands."

In Dalmatia and Montenegro, and in accordance with British policy that they should ensure civilians were not subjected to reprisals, many Chetniks made deals with the Italians—sometimes to protect themselves from the Ustaše, sometimes to help them fight the Communists.

Opinion varies as to how much Mihailović knew or approved of what some of his commanders did, but his control of th JVUO was tenuous, and it was difficult for him to entend his authority far beyond his headquarters. Some, like Kosta Pećanac, one of the pre-1914 Chetnik leaders, were loyal to King Peter II but never accepted Mihailović as commander-in-chief. Pećanac, leading a force of 3,000 in southern Serbia, felt that he, as a man with 40 years service, was senior to Mihailović.

Mihailović also had to contend with commanders like Dobroslav Jevđević. They paid lip-service to him while doing as they wished. The divlji cetnici (wild chetniks) were bandits who exploited conditions to loot and rob.

After some initial skirmishes with the occupying Axis forces, the Chetniks concentrated almost exclusively on fighting the Communist partisan resistance. In modern times, though use of the "Chetnik" label is disputed, self-identified Chetniks and associates have been linked, as nationalist guerillas in the 1990s Bosnian War.

After the war, escaped Chetniks and other nationalist Serbian emigrants formed patriotic clubs in countries such as the United States, England, and Australia, and continued to support the Chetnik ideology, which was illegal and suppressed in communist Yugoslavia.

Origins

Flag of the Chetnik movement

Chetniks originally formed as a result of the Macedonian struggle against the Ottoman Empire. Soon, other ethnic groups in the Balkans created their own chetnik detachments: Serbs, Bulgarians, Greek Andartes and Albanian Kacak. At first, the Ottoman rulers offered little resistance to them, as the various groups were primarily occupied in conflicts with each other. In Herzegovina, they fought the Turks, in northern Macedonia against Turks and pro-Turkish Albanians.

At the start of the Balkan wars there were 110 IMRO, 108 Greek, 30 Serbian and 5 Vlach detachments. They fought against the Turks in the First Balkan War, while in World War I they fought against Austria-Hungary.

Kingdom of Yugoslavia

After the formation of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes and the arrival of peacetime, the Chetnik movement experienced a transition from merely a guerrila force. In 1921 the Organization of Chetniks for Freedom in Honour of the Fatherland (Udruženje četnika za slobodu u čast Otadžbine) was formed and in 1924 the Organization of Serbian Chetniks for King and Fatherland (Udruženje srpskih četnika za Kralja i Otadžbinu) and Organization of Serbian Chetniks Petar Mrkonjić (Udruženje srpskih četnika Petar Mrkonjić) followed. These last two merged together the following year as the Organization of Serbian Chetniks Petar Mrkonjić.

After King Alexander's dictatorship in 1929 Organization of Serbian Chetniks Petar Mrkonjić was banned while the Organization of Chetniks for Freedom in Honour of the Fatherland was allowed to continue operating. Kosta Pećanac was the organization's leader from 1932 to the end of the state in 1941.

World War II

After the surrender of the Yugoslav Royal Army in April 1941, some of the remaining Yugoslav soldiers organized Yugoslav Royal Army in the Fatherland in the Ravna Gora district of western Serbia under Colonel Dragoljub (Draža) Mihailović to fight the German occupation. They were mostly ethnic Serbs though there were some Slovenes and Croats, Muslims as well. Mihailović directed his units to arm themselves and await his orders for the final push. He avoided actions which he judged were of low strategic importance. The reason behind his resolve was the fact that he had been a World War I officer.

Between 1941 and 1943, Mihailović's Chetniks had the support of the Western Allies. TIME Magazine, in 1942, featured an article which boasted the success of Mihailović's Chetniks, and heralded him as the sole defender of freedom in Nazi-occupied Europe. However, Tito's Partisans only fought the Nazis when they invaded the Soviet Union. Both Tito and Mihailović had a bounty of 100,000 Reichsmarks offered by Germans for their heads.

Throughout World War II, the Chetniks were faced with the two main categories of enemies: the German occupiers, the Ustaše on the one side and the Communist Partisans.

After the 1941 summer uprising, the guerilla activity of the Chetniks increased, and the forces of Nazi Germany retaliated very harshly against the civilian population. The Germans had introduced exact punitive measures against guerilla activity: 100 Serb civilians were to be executed for every killed soldier of the Wehrmacht and 50 for each wounded. The rival anti-fascist movements, Tito's Partisans and Mihailović's Chetniks collaborated at first, but later turned against each other, and inside Serbia a bitter civil war ensued.

In late 1941, the Germans started a massive offensive on the areas of Ravna Gora and Užice. The bulk of the Chetnik forces had to retreat for eastern Bosnia and Sandžak. There they came in direct conflict with the Ustaše, the fascist regime of Independent State of Croatia.

As the forces of Fascist Italy were latently opposed to the Communists and the Ustaša regime in their southern zone of influence, the Chetniks collaborated with the Italians to be able to engage the Ustaše and Communists. The Allies frowned upon this but kept sending support for the Chetnik forces for some time. Some Chetniks also cooperated with the Milan Nedić regime in Serbia. Finally, the Chetniks started concentrating on fighting the Partisan forces when the German army left.

The Western Allies originally supported the Chetniks because they were a better option for them than the potentially pro-Soviet Communist Partisans. The Allies had planned an invasion of the Balkans, and so the Yugoslav resistance movements were strategically important, and there was a need to make a decision which of the two factions to support. A number of Special Operations Executive missions were sent to the Balkans to determine the facts on the ground. In the mean time, the Allies stopped planning an invasion of the Balkans and finally reverted their support from the Chetniks due to their collaboration with the Axis powers, and instead supported the Partisans. At the Teheran Conference of 1943 and the Yalta Conference of 1945, Stalin and Churchill decided to split their influence in Yugoslavia in half.

On 14 August 1944, the Tito-Šubašić agreement between Partisans and the royal government was signed on the island of Vis. The document called on all Slovenes, Croats, Serbs to join Partisans. Partisans were recognized by the royal government as Yugoslavia's regular Army but were not so recognized by Mihailović and many Chetniks. On 29 August King Peter II dismissed General Mihailović as Chief-of-Staff of Yugoslav Army in the Fatherland and on 12 September appointed Tito in his place. In April and May 1945, as the victorious Yugoslav army took possession of the country's territory, many Chetniks retreated toward Italy and a smaller group retreated to Austria. Many were captured by Partisans or returned to Yugoslavia by British forces and a number were killed afterwards at Bleiburg. Some were tried in Kangaroo courts for treason and either sentenced to prison terms or death. Many were summarily executed, especially in the first months after the end of the war. In 1946, the last Chetnik units under the command of Draža Mihajlović were captured in eastern Bosnia.

During the closing years of World War II, many Chetniks defected from their units in 1944 and early 1945, when there was a general amnesty granted for royalist forces. Many Chetniks took up the offer; this treatment was also received by the Domobran fighters, but it was also extended to the Ustaše. By the end of the war, the Chetniks were still important in numbers. Some retreated with German forces north to surrender to Anglo-American forces; Mihailović and his few remaining followers tried to fight their way back to the Ravna Gora, but he was captured by Tito's Partisans. In March 1946, Mihailović was brought to Belgrade, where he was tried and executed on charges of treason in July.

The last remaining "World War II" Chetnik, the commandant Vladimir Šipčić, called "Vlado", was captured on the Herzegovina-Montenegro border area in 1957.

Allied pilot rescues and Legion of Merit

Main article: Operation Halyard

The Chetniks rescued some 500 U.S. airmen who crashed over Yugoslavia in 1944-45.

Due to the efforts of Major Richard L. Felman and President Harry S. Truman, on the recommendation of General Dwight D. Eisenhower, posthumously awarded Mihailović the "Legion of Merit", for the rescue of American Airmen by the Chetniks (Operation Airbridge).

For the first time in history, this high award and the story of the rescue was classified secret by the State Department so as not to offend the communist government of Yugoslavia. Such a display of appreciation for the Chetniks would not be welcome as they switched sides to Tito's Partisans during the war.

Almost 60 years later, on 9 May 2005 Draža Mihailović's daughter, Gordana, was presented with a decoration bestowed posthumously on her father by President Truman in 1948.

Chetnik ideology

Chetniks were royalists, and their salute was "За краља и отаџбину" ("Za kralja i otadžbinu") - For King and Fatherland. They held family values and private property in high esteem, and were thus ideologically opposed to Communists who opposed the monarchy.

Many Chetniks started to grow elaborate beards during the war, which is a traditional Orthodox Christian way to express sorrow. In this manner, they marked their sorrow for the occupied fatherland which was ravaged by war. It was said that they would keep their beards until their King returns.

Some ethnic Croats, Slovenians and Bosnian Muslims also joined Chetnik forces. Most of them were democratically oriented Yugoslav patriots or monarchists, anti-communists and anti-fascists. They didn’t fight for Greater Serbia but for the liberation of their homeland, the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. But, as the Chetnik movement didn't have a strong hierarchy, a number of Chetnik units had a clear Serbian nationalist ideology. Also, during the war Mihailović was changing his position from Yugoslavian unitarist to Serbian nationalist. Yet in January, 1944, Mahailović convened the Congress of St Sava Mihailović which was organised by Zivko Topalovic, leader of the Yugoslav Socialist Party, and held at Ba in the Suvobor Mountains, Serbia. It was attended by delegates from all over Yugoslavia. Mihailović has often been termed an 'ultra Serb' but that label is not borne out by his comments at the Congress, or the resolutions adopted. In his statement at the opening, he said: "With the utmost vigour I refute all suggestions, wherever they may come from, that the army, and I personally, have any dictatorial intentions... "In addition, our laws are sufficient guarantee that right will be satisfied. Because of that, the innocent cannot suffer. They will receive protection from me, personally, and from the army. We will not tolerate any unilateral initiatives." The Congress made seven resolutions. They were undoubtedly anti-communist, but there was no suggestion that communism should be banned after the war or that Yugoslavia should become a Greater Serbia. Instead, the resolutions called for a federal state with political and cultural rights for all citizens. Peter Karadjordjevic was to be the constitutional monarch until such time as a freely elected national assembly chose to remove him.

Collaboration and war crimes

File:Chetniks with German soldiers.jpg

A group of Chetniks pose with German soldiers in an unidentified village in Serbia {{cite web}}

In occupied Serbia, Nazis had Milan Aćimović installed as leader, and later the former Minister of War, General Milan Nedić, who governed until 1944.

Milan Nedić operated semi-independently. One group remained under the pre-war leader, Kosta Pećanac, and started collaborating with the Germans against the Communist Partisans. In Independent State of Croatia (NDH), Chetniks were under the command of Vojvoda Đujić in the Serbian Krajina region where they organized themselves in response to Ustaša attacks on Serbian villages.

Nevertheless, a majority of Chetniks rallied behind Draža Mihailović, who had been court-martialed in absentia by General Nedić and had close ties to Britain. By July 22, 1941 the Yugoslav Government-in-Exile announced that continued resistance was impossible. Later in the war, with emerging stronger Communist Partisan forces, Chetniks tried to avoid multiple front lines by avoiding clashes with Nazis, and instead they focused their efforts on eliminating Communists. At their peak, Mihailović's Chetniks claimed to have three hundred thousand troops. Chetniks viewed their ideological struggle against the Communists as one more important than their struggle against the Germans who they planned to fight after they first defeated the Communists. Once Soviet troops occupied Belgrade and had installed Tito's communist regime, Mihailović was brought to trial and executed in 1946 for genocide.

Nedić reluctantly supported Hitler and met with him in 1943. Nedić who in fact hated the Kingdom formed his own paramilitary storm troops known as the State Guard. The Guard was comprised of former ex-members of the Chetniks which had existed as an all-Serbian para-military police force under King Alexander and Prince Paul. When Yugoslavia disintegrated, a minor faction of so-called Chetniks swore allegiance to the new Serbian Nazi government. Another minor group remained under the pre-war leader, Kosta Pećanac, who openly collaborated with the Germans. A third pseudo-Chetnik faction followed the Serbian Fascist Dimitrije Ljotić, but they were in fact more collaborators than real Chetniks. Ljotić's units were primarily responsible for tracking down Chetniks from Mihailović units for execution or deportation to concentration camps. Only 1,115 of Belgrade's twelve thousand Jews would survive. Ninety-five per cent of the Jewish population of Serbia was exterminated by German forces.

In the areas of NDH, which included Bosnia and Croatia, a bitter ethnic war was fought. The ruling Ustaše regime had proclaimed as its goal to exterminate one third of the Serbs, expel the other third and convert the rest to the Catholic faith. Chetniks fought both the Ustaše and Partisans in these areas. The areas around Višegrad, Zvornik, Foča, Čajniče, Pljevlja were gravely impacted by this kind of ethnic cleansing until Tito's Partisans arrived at the site in large numbers in 1942. There's one report of 2,000 Serb men killed in Foča, and another report of 1,200 fighters and 8,000 civilians killed in easternmost Bosnia and Sandžak during this time.

Although the number of victims was less than that of the Ustaše government which carried out a well-coordinated and organized genocide of the Serbs, the Chetniks' force was smaller in size and more ineffectual. However, Serbs consistently point out that there is a major difference in the scale of the atrocities of the two groups.

It is to be noted that Partisans too were involved in numerous war crimes. These included the murder of thousands of Ustaše and Domobran fighters in the Bleiburg massacre and unselective execution of large groups of people in the aftermath of the war, including native Germans from Vojvodina, Italians in northern Yugoslavia, Hungarians in Vojvodina, ideological and political opponents, as well as people whose collaboration with Germans was only suspected. After the war, the communist police were also trying to catch Chetnik commanders.

Second Yugoslavia

After the end of World War II, the Chetnik movement was banned in Communist Yugoslavia and its leaders either escaped the country or were executed by the Communists. Momčilo Đujić later formed the Movement of Serbian Chetniks of Ravna Gora in the United States and Canada.

Yugoslav Wars

In the late 1980s, as Slobodan Milošević came to power in Serbia, the Chetnik movement was unofficially rehabilitated and the suppression of their literature and iconography was lifted. New opposition parties openly supported the role of Chetniks in the Second World War, claiming that the official history had been falsified.

Politicians like Vojislav Šešelj organized para-military units and demanded that Serbs use force to solve the nationalistic tensions in Yugoslavia and ensure that the territories populated by Serbs in other Yugoslav republics which planned to secede remain united with Serbia. During the Yugoslav wars which followed, many Serb paramilitary units called themselves Chetniks, and Croats and Bosniaks commonly used the word to describe any armed Serb unit, regular or paramilitary.

Several paramilitary formations, including those by Željko Ražnatović "Arkan", boasted Chetnik insignia and many of them fought against crimes commited against Serbs. This has contributed to the negative image of Chetniks in Croatia and Bosnia who brutally killed many Serb residents.

Contemporary period

In modern times, the Chetnik movement is largely rehabilitated in Serbia, notwithstanding the involvement in war crimes by some of the Chetniks. They are highly praised by Serbian nationalists, but all the political factions see them in a very different light from the one common in Tito's time. This is largely due to the impact of Serbian pro-monarchist politician Vuk Drašković, who was against Serbian ultranationalism and Milošević rule, while making a great effort to rehabilitate the Chetnik movement.

In late 2004, the National Assembly of Serbia passed a new law that equalized the rights of the former Chetnik members with those of the former Partisans, including the right to war pensions. Rights were granted on the basis that both were anti-fascist movements that fought occupiers, and this formulation has entered the law. The vote was 176 for, 24 against and 4 abstained. The socialist party (SPS) of Slobodan Milošević was the one voting against the decision.

There have been varying reactions to the law in Serbian public opinion. Many have praised it as just and long overdue, including the Prince Alexander Karađorđević of Yugoslavia (son of the last Yugoslav king), as well as most political parties (with the most notable exception of SPS). Others protested the decision, including the Serbian Association of Former Partisans, the Serbian Helsinki Committee for Human Rights, the Croatian Anti-Fascist Movement, and the President and Prime Minister of Croatia. In 2005, Croatian president Stipe Mesić cancelled a planned visit to Serbia as it coincided with a Chetnik gathering in Ravna Gora supported by the Serbian government, and attended by Vuk Drašković.

Many Serbians allegedly support the Chetniks due to the Yugoslav wars and a failure of the Communist idea of "brotherhood and unity of southern Slavs" . On the other hand, most Croats and Bosniaks see Chetniks as a fascist movement, no better than the Croatian Ustaše or the SS Handžar Division .

Vojislav Šešelj, leader of the Serbian Radical Party, holds the rank of voivoda of the Chetniks, given to him in 1989 by Momčilo Đujić, a surviving leader of the World War II Chetniks who fled to the USA. The Serbian basketball player Milan Gurović has a tattoo of World War II Chetnik Draža Mihailović on his left arm which has resulted in a ban since 2004 in playing in Croatia under its anti-fascist laws. Turkey has also threatened to enact such a ban. Former Serbian rocker Bora Đorđević is also a declared Chetnik.

Today Chetnik activity is seriously restricted or banned in all neighbouring countries other than Serbia and the Bosnian Republika Srpska. In 2003, the Montenegrin government forbade the building of a statue of Pavle Đurišić near Berane.

File:LegionMeritDraza.gif

Dragoljub Mihailović posthumous awarded with Legion of Merit, by U.S. President Harry S. Truman, 1948

Bibliography

• Tomasevich, Jozo, War and Revolution in Yugoslavia: The Chetniks. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1975
• Milazzo, Matteo J., The Chetnik Movement and the Yugoslav Resistance. Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1975
• Hoare, Marko A., Genocide and Resistance in Hitler's Bosnia: The Partisans and the Chetniks, 1941-1943. London: Oxford University Press, 2006
• Karchmar, Lucien. Draža Mihailović and the Rise of the Četnik Movement, 1941-1942. New York: Garland Pub., 1987.
• Lees, Michael. The Rape of Serbia: The British Role in Tito's Grab for Power, 1943-1944. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1991.
• Martin, David. Ally Betrayed: The Uncensored Story of Tito and Mihailović. New York: Prentice-Hall, 1946.
• Sipcic, Radoje. Vladimir "Vlado" Sipcic, The Last King's Soldier of the Kingdom Paris, FR: Integra; Beograd: Paris, 2004.
• Martin, David. Patriot or Traitor: The Case of General Mihailović: Proceedings and Report of the Commission of Inquiry of the Committee for a Fair Trial for Draža Mihailović. Hoover Archival Documentaries. Hoover Institution Publication, Volume 191. Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press, Stanford University, 1978.
• Martin, David. The Web of Disinformation: Churchill’s Yugoslav Blunder. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1990.
• Pavasovic, Mike "Cetniks, Heroes or Villains?" History Today, April, 1992
• Roberts, Walter R. Tito, Mihailović, and the Allies, 1941–1945. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1973.
• Trew, Simon. Britain, Mihailović, and the Chetniks, 1941–42. Basingstoke, UK: Macmillan; New York: St. Martin’s Press in association with King’s College, London, 1998.

External links

• OPERATION "AIR BRIDGE" Draza Mihailovich and the Rescue of US Airmen during World War II
• AP: Airmen revisit World War II sanctuary (2004)
• Zdravko Dizdar: Chetnik genocidal crimes during World War II
• History of Chetniks, both in English and Serbian
• Chetnik movement during World War II
• U.S. Congressional record on Chetniks and Draza Mihailovic, 1987
• 1903-2003 100th Anniversary of Chetnik Movement
• Guerrilla Warfare in the Balkans, 1941-1945: Gen. Draza Mihailovic and the Prinz Eugen SS Division
• Последњи словеначки четник постао војвода from Politika newspaper, in Serbian

See also

• Yugoslavia during the Second World War
• Invasion of Yugoslavia
• Partisans (Yugoslavia)
• Serbian Volunteer Corps
• History of Germany during World War II
• Independent State of Croatia during World War II
• Nedić's Serbia during World War II
• Seven anti-partisan offensives
• First anti-partisan offensive - 1941
• Second anti-partisan offensive - 1942
• Third anti-partisan offensive - 1942
• Battle of Kozara - 1942
• Battle of Neretva - 1943
• Sutjeska offensive - 1943
• Raid on Drvar - 1944
• Battle on Lijevča field - 1945
• List of anti-Partisan operations in Yugoslavia
• Trial of Draža Mihailović